Recently, in the field of the semiconductor production, in order to make it possible to transfer a more fine pattern, EUV exposure technology has been promising in place of ArF exposure technology which uses ArF excimer laser light. The EUV exposure technology uses, as the exposure light, EUV (extreme ultra-violet) light having a shorter wavelength than the ArF excimer laser light. Here, the EUV light includes a soft X-ray and vacuum UV light, and is specifically light having a wavelength of from about 0.2 to 100 nm. At present, as the exposure light, EUV light having a wavelength of about 13.5 nm is mainly investigated.
In the EUV exposure technology, a reflective type mask is used. Such a mask is produced by forming respective layers such as a reflective layer, a protective layer and an absorber layer in this order on a substrate to constitute a mask blank and then patterning the absorber layer on the mask blank to have a predetermined pattern (Patent Document 1).